Dear John
by Grace Hightower
Summary: In which Captain John Watson returns to Afghanistan. He and Sherlock exchange letters.
1. Dear John

**Hello, my dear Sherlock fans! I was listening to 'Letters from Home', and got this idea. People in the military-any branch, any country-love getting letters from home. It's like a little piece of love folded up on paper that you can carry with you anywhere. So…here goes. Hope that you all enjoy!**

_John-_

_London is very foggy this time of year. I hate it. I've got a new case-a man on the South End was found dead in a locked room, no entries or exits. I strongly suspect the involvement of a well-concealed trap door. Did I mention that Lestrade won't let me anywhere near the crime scene? Allowing _Anderson _inside and not me. Outrageous. The man has the IQ of a mentally challenged baboon. _

_-SH_

Captain John Watson ran his fingers over the slightly crumpled edges of the paper. Clearly written with great haste, ink slightly blurred, dark coffee stain from a mug staining the corner. It was very _Sherlock_.

"Whose that from, Cap?" Lieutenant Tommy Briggs peered over John's shoulder, obviously attempting to read the letter. "Your girlfriend?"

John snorted and rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, right."

He would have gone on, told Briggs about Sherlock, his dear old friend in London, but at that moment the sharp pepper of sniper fire split the clear Afghanistan morning. Someone shouted something and a young American soldier rushed past, rifle held aloft. John folded the letter, slipped it in his shirt pocket and headed for the relative safety of the field hospital tent and his next patient, already mentally composing his next letter to Sherlock.

_Sherlock-_

_It's been very hot over here. It's too bad, actually, after London fog. Clears your senses. Nice to get the city out of your lungs. Isn't that what we said on the Baskervilles case? Ha, remember the H.O.U.? Or the hounds, as I thought they were. My God, man, I'd never been so scared. And you, letting me believe I was about to get ripped apart by some great beast. Bloody hell, Sherlock. Anyway, it's been busy lately. One day we're treating local kids with viruses, the next we're patching up American marines. One of the men in my brigade, Halman, got shot in the leg. He's being airlifted to a real hospital in the city tonight. Interesting to hear about your new case…that damn Anderson. I'm sure that Lestrade will let you in soon if you behave yourself. Keep me updated! _

_**-**__Captain John Watson, 20__th__ Armoured Squadron and 260th Field Hospital. _

Sherlock Holmes ran his fingers over the neat creases in the paper. Watson's unmistakable penmanship-the small loops in the d's and the p's-, the slightly faded ink-pen going dry-it was all very _John_. Then again, Sherlock was like that. He could have picked his best friend-his only friend's-letters from a bundle of a hundred. Luckily, he only had to fish the one out of 221b Baker Street's mailbox. It wasn't exactly Mycroft's style to write.

"What's that, dear?" Ms. Hudson appeared behind Sherlock, standing on tiptoe in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the paper. "Has John written you?"

Sherlock folded the letter and slid it into his coat pocket.

"Yes, Ms. Hudson. He's written me."

**Okay, so I probably COMPLETELY SCREWED UP everything about the British Army, and if I did I'm so so so sorry. I respect the Hell out of anyone over there fighting and I honestly don't want to offend anyone with my stupidity regarding the UK armed forces. Please tell me if you see an error. Love to all of you!**


	2. Secrets

_John-_

_It was the wife. I know it. Lestrade knows it too, but he won't admit anything. Anderson probably still thinks it's the butler, because he's an idiot._

_-SH_

_PS: write Ms. Hudson a letter, she's started worrying_

John reread the letter slowly as he leaned against the wall. The soft snoring of five other men filled the plywood and canvas tent, and John knew that he would not be sleeping tonight. Mortar attacks had become more frequent in the area, and a few days ago a Humvee full of marines had hit an IED. The injuries had been horrific and John could still hear the pained groans that had filled the mobile hospital when he closed his eyes. It was worse at night, it was always worse at night. When a dark cloak fell across the jagged landscape, enemies were easily disguised. John had never particularly liked nighttime, but it had always seemed so much safer at 221b Baker Street, even with Sherlock playing the violin or conducing loud chemistry experiments at odd hours of the morning. It was nice to have someone else in the house, no matter if it was an actual house or a tent. Still, John felt lonely. Mycroft had been right-he had missed the war. But he missed London, the bustling streets, the layers of fog that hung over the rooftops. Most of all, he missed cases with Sherlock. He reached for his pen and paper, determined to chase away any nightmares he might have with pen and ink.

_Dear Mrs. Hudson,_

_Thank you for the package. You're very right-we do need extra socks and hats because it does get awfully cold here at night. We're having lots of injuries from IEDs in the area, but they always exaggerate on the telly so you shouldn't worry. I hope that Sherlock isn't being too much trouble. If he starts shooting the wall again tell me and I'll give him a phone call. (We're allowed five minutes of phone time every week. I've been saving mine for Harry, but I wouldn't mind spending a few minutes on Sherlock) _

_Much Love,_

_John_

He sealed the letter inside an envelope, reminding himself to mail it first thing in the morning. He hadn't written his landlord-though she was much more than that-in a few weeks, and she was probably becoming borderline frantic. Briggs had asked if the letter was to his mother, and John had just chuckled. Privately, he thought that Ms. Hudson was far more of a mother figure than his own mum had ever been. When people asked John why'd he had joined the Army, he simply replied that it had seemed the right thing to do at the time. In truth, however, he had craved order. Coming from a disorganized, chaotic childhood with alcoholic parents, the order of the Army had been a welcome relief. He was actually shocked that Sherlock hadn't brilliantly deduced his abusive, drunk parents yet. Of course, his mother had been dead for many years, haven fallen down a staircase on the underground and hit her head whilst heavily intoxicated. And his father...he hadn't spoken to his father in years. Not since the day he went off to university, when Tom Watson had tossed his son's belongings through the front window and swore that no son of his would go waste money at a 'school for liberals'. When John attempted to sneak back into the house and retrieve the rest of his things, his father had punched him in the face. He still bore the tiny scar under his chin where his father's wedding ring-which he had never removed after his wife's death-had sliced through to the bone. When Sherlock had noticed the scar-of course he had-John had lied about a fistfight with another medical student. Some things, he knew, he would be able to keep from Sherlock. And that was how it should be. There were some things that you didn't talk about, that you just locked away.

**Thank you so much to everyone who got this far. Please, please leave reviews! :)**


	3. Marching On

**Thanks so much to all of my awesome readers who took the time to review. You guys rock. And even if you didn't review, you still read the story which is awesome.**

Sherlock jolted awake long before dawn, confronted with an empty apartment. In the soft dark light he crossed the cluttered room and stood at the window. Baker Street was silent and frosty. A thin layer of ice encrusted the window, making the glass all along the street sparkle like crystals. Snow drifted slowly from the sky, frosting the landscape with white powder. Sherlock wondered absently how hot it was in Afghanistan-approximately 103 degrees by his calculations-and then wondered how John was doing. The youngest Holmes brother had never been to war, and despite his often wild imagination he could not fathom what it must be like to find yourself in the midst of battle. He wondered briefly if John ever got scared. Probably not, he had deduced long ago that his friend lived for excitement and danger. They were very alike in that aspect. He thought of the first time he had met John, so many months ago. At the time, the former medic had been the very picture of the war-haunted soldier. It didn't take long for Sherlock to figure out that John was far from haunted-he missed the thrill of battle. Personally, the younger Holmes didn't see what was so exciting about charging around being shot at and having terrorists trying to blow you up every few hours. He preferred a nice serial killer any day.

_John-_

_We have still not broken the case. It's getting colder here and snowed last night. Mrs. Hudson got your letter._

_-SH_

He crammed the paper inside an envelope and licked it shut, the sealer bitter against his tongue. He glanced at the wall calendar on his way out the door, realized that it was already November. John had been gone for three months already. And since he had left, Sherlock had lost count of the days. They ran together like ink across paper, the passage of time marked only by the setting and rising of the sun. Earth's orbit around the sun seemed to have slowed, and Sherlock-for the first time in a long time-felt very lost.

**Helmand Province, Afghanistan**

John jerked awake in the cool blue pre-dawn to the sound of helicopters and incoming casualties. _All personnel, please report to the medical area. All personnel, please report to the medical area immediately. _The radio crackled to life and John rolled out of bed. He felt bleary with sleep, his eyes blurred with exhaustion. He needed something-a drink, a cold shower-anything to wake himself up. A few hours of sleep would be nice, but anytime he found himself dozing off insurgents decided that it would be a good time to lob mortars at the camp.

"Cap, we have a shrapnel wound coming in now," Briggs appeared at John's side, jogging along the stretcher. Four Navy Hospitalmen were carrying a young American soldier along towards the medical building. From the young American's agonized cries, he was evidently in excruciating pain. John quickly scrubbed down and donned his operating gown and cap.

"Let's see what we have here," he said, moving over to where the medics were cutting away the soldier's shredded uniform. John saw that he was very young, probably eighteen or nineteen. A pretty young Irish nurse was shooting him up with morphine, talking quietly to the kid.

"It'll be okay, luv," she was saying. John knew that this surgery would consist mainly of digging shards of metal out of the boy's nasty abdomen wound. He prepared himself for a long night of no sleep. Not that it mattered anymore. Yet again, John Watson had returned to his practice of putting others before himself. It was the way he had been raised, and it was the way he always would be.

Eight hours later, John stripped off his bloody gown and stumbled into his barracks. The poor kid wouldn't have lasted another minute on the table, and he was in critical condition now. John prayed that the kid would last through the night and survive until they could ship him to Germany.

"You okay, Cap?" Briggs was pulling a sheet over his head. John stared numbly at the younger man for a long moment. Was he okay? No. This was war. No one was okay. But they kept marching on, fighting through whatever fresh hell they encountered.

"Yeah, Briggs. I'm okay."

**So thanks for getting through this chapter. I'm in San Diego now and this hotel wifi is REALLY slow, haha. So hopefully I'll be able to update more later…but for now please review! Thanks for reading! **


	4. A Shot in the Dark

**Helmand Province, Afghanistan**

_Dear Sherlock,_

_I never thought I'd say this but I miss you. More than I should. I miss cases and running through the streets of London and even your screeching on the violin and shooting at the wall until three in the morning. And your damn experiments, I miss those too. So what do you think, Mr. Holmes? That I've finally cracked? Gone mad from the pressure and the pure hell of war? Seen one too many IED victim, lost myself amongst the bloody wreckage of young lives? Left the remnants of my sanity in the shattered chaos of a city laid to waste? Do you think I've gone mad Sherlock, because I miss you? You're my friend, after all, so I suppose it's only natural to miss you. I hope to see you soon-or at least someday, if I make it out of here alive._

_-Captain John Watson_

He reread the letter to himself, half worried at the words that seemed to spill, unbidden, from the pen. It was creepy what sentences formed when you wrote without trying to. Did he really miss Sherlock that much? Or was he just homesick? It had been nearly six months since they had deployed, and their unit commander had hinted that they might not get R and R for at least that long.

As for the letter…melodramatic might it be, it was heartfelt. He had barely thought about what he was writing, and now it all made sense. The fear and horror of battle, the pangs of homesickness, the longing for somewhere other than this sun-baked hell.

He mailed the letter before he could change his mind.

**221b Baker Street**

It was raining when he got the letter, cold drops cascading from an unfriendly sky. Sherlock had become something akin to a shut-in, only venturing from 221b if absolutely necessary. He went down twice a day to check the mailbox. Sherlock read through the letter twice, his heart pounding for the first time in months. It was not a pleasant sensation. It was all so very unlike John-the scrawling handwriting, the blurred ink, the crumpled paper. It had been written with great haste, Sherlock could tell, but he also knew that the words were heartfelt. And that scared him.

"Oh, John."

Such a simple man, Sherlock thought. A simple man who had the unusual ability to inspire great genius in others. Sherlock stared out at the slate sky. A strange, aching feeling was growing under his ribs. He had no idea what it was, but the sensation scared him.

**Afghanistan, again**

He never saw the bullet coming. It happened so quickly-the radio call that a young soldier had been wounded out the field, John hastily donning his flak jacket and helmet, rushing out into the burning heat. It was getting dark outside, the dying sun sinking low over the jagged mountain range to the north. A young American medic named Sasha slid into the Humvee next to him. Her dark eyes met his for a moment, then she looked away.

John's heart pounded against his rib cage as the Humvee roared down the road; he couldn't stop thinking about how easy it would be for them to run over an IED. He never would see the end coming, it would over in a single brilliant flash. What a way to go, he thought.

A few miles outside the camp, the Humvee shuddered to a halt. John and Sasha scrambled out of the armored vehicle and hauled their heavy kits across the burning sand. John's radio crackled but he saw no evidence of any wounded soldiers. And then the gunshot. A single crack, then a volley, that split the otherwise peaceful evening. Pain exploded across John's shoulder and he fell back into the sand. He could heard Sasha screaming something above him, and excruciating agony had taken hold of his right side.

"Man down!" Sasha was yelling, and there were soldiers running out of the Humvee and he could feel himself being dragged across the still-hot dirt. He knew that he had been shot, because he had been shot before, and the burning pain was the same. It was numbing, everything fading in and out as Sasha hunched over him. When he looked down, her hands were pressed over the hole in his flak jacket and blood was seeping between her fingers. Perhaps _pouring_ was a better term, because there was an awful of it. Being a doctor, John had seen a lot of gore, but there was something vastly different about watching your own life pouring out onto the hot sand. His head was starting to feel fuzzy, his insides strangely light, as if he were floating away. Was he dying?

_I can't die_, John thought, panicking slightly. _I still have a life! What about London? What about Baker Street? Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, Molly, Harry-I have to make things right with her. And what about…what about Sherlock? _

John's heart wrenched painfully, a sick feeling creeping into his gut, as he thought of the detective-the friend-he had left behind in London. He had left many things unsaid the day that he had left on a C-17 from Heathrow.

Above him, his fellow medic was saying things into her radio, saying that it didn't look good, that they had to get him out of there now.

"Sasha…" his voice caught in throat. "Am I…am I going to die?"

She had very blue eyes that latched onto his as her hands pressed onto his wound. There was something slightly frantic about her gaze.

"John, we're going to get you out of here."

_But in a bodybag?_ He wanted to ask, but thought that it might be inappropriate. Besides, he didn't want his last words-if they were going to be his last words-to be unwarranted sarcasm.

"Tell them…" he heard the distant thump of helicopter blades growing closer. "Tell them…I'm…sorry…"

If this was what dying felt like, he thought, it wasn't so bad. The pain was lessening, and everything just felt very numb. From the murders he had solved-or rather, Sherlock had solved and he had tagged along to-he had always assumed that death would be a painful and dramatic affair. But now he could see a Blackhawk hovering overhead, like some huge dragonfly, and his fingers scrabbled for Sasha's wrist. She turned her head, and her blue eyes were luminous in the darkening light. The last thing he saw were the two pale eyes, swimming in the dark, before everything faded to black.

**London, 221b Baker Street**

He jerked awake in the middle of the night, a thin sheen of sweat gathering on his forehead, nausea churning his stomach. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. Sherlock flicked on the light and glanced around the deserted flat-nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing save for the sick feeling that was currently working its way through his gut. It wasn't the first time that this had happened. Since John's deployment, Sherlock hadn't been sleeping well. Or very much at all, really. There was something a little unsettling about waking up to an empty flat. He could barely remember the time before John had been living there.

As he sat there, panting slightly, the phone rang. He seized it eagerly, only to hear Mycroft's less-than-dulcet tones.

"Sherlock? It's John."

The words-along with the lack of pleasantries that his older brother usually opened a phone conversation with-sent a nasty jolt down to Sherlock's gut.

"Is he alright?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end, then Mycroft sighed heavily.

"He's been wounded in action."

All of Sherlock's breath went out of his lungs. He felt as though he were suffocating.

"How is he?"

Another few seconds of silence, during which Mycroft tapped away at his keyboard.

"They're attempting to stabilize him."

Sherlock felt as though he were drowning in a bottomless pit, as though someone had forced a pillow over his airways, as though he were going to fall down to the floor. For the first time in a long time, there was a strange sensation deep in his chest, as though a previously undisturbed creature was stirring somewhere beneath his ribs. It was something he had not felt for many months. It was almost like falling.

**So sorry for the bad ending, I couldn't decide when to stop. Please review, lovely readers! 3**


	5. Coming Home

In the blue predawn light, Sherlock paced by the window. Outside, London was sealed beneath a tight lid of grey clouds. It was a year without summer, the gloomy months bleeding into each other. Sherlock had begun to lose track of time, he occupied himself by reading through old cases, pacing the worn wooden floor and shooting the wall. He had considered relapsing into his nicotine addiction, out of sheer boredom, but had remembered a long-ago promise to John and had thrown the patches into the waste bin.

It was hard to believe that it had been nearly four months since John had been shot in Afghanistan. His letters had stopped coming with regularity, Sherlock assumed that he had been too injured to write. The few letters that had come suggested that he was first being operated on in Kabul, then flying to Germany for further rehabilitation.

The street below was empty, barren in the chill blue morning. The postman's dented truck was rattling past now, stopping below the row of shops. Sherlock watched as the navy cap bobbed towards the postboxes, deposited his letters, and then returned to the truck.

Sherlock put on his coat and went downstairs, fully dressed, to check the mail. These days, it was nothing but junk mail and bills, so Sherlock was surprised when his fingertips made contact with a postcard.

It was from Bagram Air Base, Germany. Three words were printed in black ink, in the middle of the card:

**I'm coming home**.

At six o'clock, Sherlock lingered at the arrivals gate at Heathrow, It hadn't taken much-a phone call to Mycroft, that's how desperate he was-to get the information he needed. The airline lounge was crowded, people waiting with chauffer signs and flowers and cell phones, waiting for their friends and family to get off the plane. Outside the bay window, the sky was darkening and the runway lights had flickered on. The white lamps were attracting hordes of insects that fluttered and glistened against the bleak night.

Sherlock waited anxiously as the accordion door opened and the first class passengers began to file out, then the other passengers. They had the tired, weary look of the traveler. Then, behind a horde of German tourists in sweatpants and sandals, came a man in a uniform.

Captain John Watson had come back from war a changed man, but aside from a slight limp there was no noticeable shift to his physical character. He walked in a sort of dazed shuffle, his head down, eyes glancing ahead every few seconds. He was carrying in one hand the camouflage duffel bag that all soldiers carried, and when he reached the end of the gangplank he stopped and stood still in the rush of humanity.

He slowly raised his eyes, and when he saw Sherlock he did a double take. Confusion widened his eyes in a comically adorable manner. And then he was rushing forwards, duffel bag forgotten, and the next thing Sherlock knew he was standing in John's embrace. The doctor smelt like disinfectant and dust and airplane air, and his fingers had fisted in Sherlock's coat as though he never planned on letting go.

"Sherlock," John muttered. "I missed you like hell."

Sherlock found himself returning the hug, and when his arms slid around John it felt very natural.

"I missed you too, John."

**Ahhhhhhh! So this is it, everyone. The end of the story! But please be on the lookout for more John/Sherlock fics that I plan on writing. Thanks for sticking with me until the end of the story, your support means a lot. **


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